There are still bubbles

I know a thing or two about sewage. (don't ask. none of your damn business.)

I'm aware of a long-standing pissing match between the Water Rec. District and the IL EPA. But to me, this article doesn't seem to address a real point of contention to me -- EPA: "Disinfect the treated sewage." MWRD: "No way EPA!"

I mean, there are genuine disputes. First, it's the MWRD's job to treat the sewage. Not the EPA's. So you have one agency trying to tell another how to do its job. But then another part of the MWRD's job is to monitor water quality, and they have certain environmental enforcement powers to control what ends up in the local water basin under their responsibility.

An old fashioned turf war. A pissing match.

By my reckoning, I don't think the MWRD is so much against the EPA on disinfecting the treated water. But, well, adding a whole 'nother step to the treatment process would probably mean a big tax hike for people living in the MWRD's service area, which is basically Cook Co.

So it's really a question of the political will of a govt. agency to raise taxes (and, hence, their profile) on the already generous enough tax payers of Cook Co., I'd say.

As for Bubbly Creek? Ah, I know it so well. But perhaps I know it best through the words of my dawg Upton Sinclair, who wrote about my Lithuanian brethren on the brutal floors of the of the Stock Yards in The Jungle:

"Bubbly Creek" is an arm of the Chicago River, and forms the southern boundary of the yards: all the drainage of the square mile of packing houses empties into it, so that it is really a great open sewer a hundred or two feet wide. One long arm of it is blind, and the filth stays there forever and a day. The grease and chemicals that are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange transformations, which are the cause of its name; it is constantly in motion, as if huge fish were feeding in it, or great leviathans disporting themselves in its depths. Bubbles of carbonic acid gas will rise to the surface and burst, and make rings two or three feet wide. Here and there the grease and filth have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lava; chickens walk about on it, feeding, and many times an unwary stranger has started to stroll across, and vanished temporarily. The packers used to leave the creek that way, till every now and then the surface would catch on fire and burn furiously, and the fire department would have to come and put it out. Once, however, an ingenious stranger came and started to gather this filth in scows, to make lard out of; then the packers took the cue, and got out an injunction to stop him, and afterward gathered it themselves. The banks of "Bubbly Creek" are plastered thick with hairs, and this also the packers gather and clean.